I shook the sketchbook frantically in fluster. As if doing so would make the wrongly drawn lines fall off like dust. When I glanced cautiously, Jukyung glared at me with eyes clearly containing the thought “of course you would,” then turned and entered the bedroom.
No, it wasn’t on purpose…
I sighed, but it was already too late. Checking the time, I don’t know when time passed like this, but it was already well past 12 o’clock. I put the sketchbook and pencil in the dressing room, washed my hands, and then also quietly entered the bedroom. Jukyung had already slipped into the blanket with only the top of his head showing a little. Even though the air conditioner was on, it must be stuffy. Can he even sleep like that?
“……”
Well, it’s not my concern.
It wasn’t something to apologize for, so I also just turned off the light and burrowed into the blanket. Because the bed was large, there was quite a distance between Jukyung and me, but still, perhaps because there was one blanket, the warmth from body heat seemed to be subtly transmitted. Cool outside and cozy inside—the perfect state for sleeping. My body quickly became languid. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
***
I tried to sleep.
But it’s a big problem.
Sleep didn’t come.
I blinked my eyes in the darkness. Beside me, Jukyung was already breathing evenly, deeply asleep. Since he’s a working person, he must get sleepy at regular times. But I’m a bit different.
The first day I came to Jukyung’s house, I was so tired that I fell asleep immediately like losing consciousness, whether anyone was in the bed or not. On the second day too, I was tense briefly but I think I fell asleep quickly. Today, even though I’d been quite diligently moving around since morning, only my body was a bit tired while my mind was wide awake.
But it’s not like I wanted to leave the comfortable bed either, so I lay there blankly staring at the ceiling, then stealthily turned my gaze to look at Jukyung. Jukyung was sleeping soundly in the same initial position lying with his back turned.
In the morning when I was shocked to discover the half-naked guy, Jukyung made shameless sounds saying he normally sleeps in just underwear but wore shorts out of courtesy. Then tonight he lay down with his upper body bare from the start. He must have thought there was nothing more to be cautious about since he’d already said it.
I didn’t want to hear that guys should stop being so sensitive with each other—honestly, if it weren’t the same bed, I wouldn’t have cared either—and I wasn’t in a position to pick a fight. I just thought at least he didn’t take off the shorts.
Just this morning I’d been inwardly huffing about why I had to see a guy’s bare skin from where I lay, but actually looking at Jukyung’s sleeping back view, I thought I was subtly feasting my eyes. From a purely aesthetic perspective, of course.
Through the half-lowered screen window, city lights flowed in, illuminating Jukyung’s back white. It was a firm, majestic, and sleek back. The prominent shoulder blades and the deep, straight groove carved in the center were beautiful. The perfume scent flowed quite thickly.
Without realizing it, I reached out my hand as if enchanted. I quietly traced the line of his shoulders, the long carved spine, and the prominent scapula. At first I carefully touched only with my fingertips, but before I knew it, I was placing my palm and pressing gently. The skin that had been slightly cool exposed outside the blanket gradually began to heat up warmly while touching like that.
Huk.
At that moment, as Jukyung turned over as if waking from sleep, I snapped to attention. I stiffened in surprise for an instant. No matter how desirable the subject, what kind of sexual harassment-like thing was I doing in the middle of the night? Even if Jukyung woke up and said he couldn’t let someone like me sleep in his bed and kicked me out of the house, I had nothing to say.
In less than a second, my head began to get tangled in complexity. When Jukyung was still not fully awake, I should have quickly retrieved the hand that was betraying its owner’s reason and moving on its own, and pretended to be asleep. But my body, frozen in fluster, wouldn’t move as I wanted, so I just squeezed my eyes shut while my arm was awkwardly extended.
With my eyes closed, I covered my face as if burying it in the pillow. Through the shaking of the blanket and mattress, I felt Jukyung turning his body toward me. Jukyung’s hand lifted my wrist that was lying limply on the mattress. It felt like my wrist caught fire. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, but I tried my best to breathe as naturally as possible.
Please let him think I accidentally touched his back while tossing in my sleep.
A few seconds that felt like eons to me passed, and Jukyung obediently moved my hand toward my body. Or did he move it? Jukyung’s large palm seemed to press my wrist slightly, then rubbed as if sliding his fingertips from my wrist toward my palm and quietly cupped my palm. Then he inserted his fingers between mine.
“……”
He inserted fingers? He interlaced them? Why?
The touching skin was so ticklish that my arm itched, my heart itched, and my lower belly itched. My toes curled on their own. I heard a low sighing sound. And just like when we touched, the warmth of the hand quietly withdrew. And after a brief moment, regular breathing sounds began again.
Even after that, I pretended to be asleep for quite a while, worried my eyes would meet Jukyung’s, not even breathing, and only after a really long time did I open my eyes again. Unlike before, Jukyung was asleep lying facing my direction. Both his eyes and mouth were comfortably and naturally closed.
Moonlight played on the eyelashes that settled down embracing his long eyes. Below that, the shadowed cheek shone pale like marble. The lips that only spat sharp words were soft with sweet sleep, and the sharp jawline buried in the pillow looked peaceful and cozy.
Jukyung’s hand was lightly placed right in front of that face. And in a position barely touching those fingers was my hand.
It was strange. My heart began to pound like crazy. To the point where I worried what if my heart burst. More than dying from a bursting heart, I was more worried about Jukyung waking and seeing my flushed face. Because if he asked why, I couldn’t possibly explain.
Suddenly it became hard to suppress my pheromones. Even though it was something habitual and familiar to my body, not difficult. I closed my eyes tightly and steadied my breathing. Everything was the moonlight’s enchantment.
The night was long and long.
***
7
The weekend passed and a new week began.
You might say what meaning does a new week have for an unemployed person, but there definitely was meaning. I was going to become a job-seeker with the goal of escaping unemployment.
On Monday morning, I again woke up alone in bed at a late hour. It wasn’t behavior befitting a self-proclaimed job-seeker, but it couldn’t be helped. I was still a job-seeker beginner, and I couldn’t sleep properly for the past two days because I was absorbed in quite serious worries.
There’s a saying about night magic. I was exactly that type.
Though it’s only been a short period, I decided to humbly admit that I was enchanted by Kwon Jukyung’s shell. The fact that I’m a human weak to appearances, regardless of whether it’s human, animal, or object, is nothing new. Since childhood, I liked anything pretty, cute, and beautiful.
Of course, this is absolutely not a story meaning I’ve fallen emotionally for Kwon Jukyung. The interest and emotion I have toward Kwon Jukyung are feelings arising purely from an aesthetic perspective.
The standards of beauty each individual has can all be different, and I too have my own standards. Though I think the beauty coming from a well-maintained appearance isn’t much different whether male or female, I’ve lived until now thinking women were overwhelmingly more beautiful. Though I’m also a man—no, precisely because I’m a man—I’ve thought women’s appearances are closer to the perfect standard of beauty than guys.
To me, Kwon Jukyung was a rare subject that caught my eye despite being a man. There was nothing special about why I particularly liked nighttime Jukyung. The harmony of moonlight would of course have an influence, but above all, in Kwon Jukyung’s case, being naked rather than clothed, and keeping his mouth shut rather than opening it to piss me off, stimulated my aesthetic sensibility more.
Of course, it’s a bit disappointing that I can’t see his eyes at night since they’re closed, but when they’re open he never looks at me kindly, so I have no choice but to be satisfied with just photos.
So what am I trying to say?
The nighttime Kwon Jukyung—in other words, Kwon Jukyung who doesn’t say mean things, doesn’t glare at me disapprovingly, and just sleeps obediently with his perfect body exposed—can be a perfect subject for me. That’s the conclusion I reached about why my heart pumps like crazy when night comes.
There was no reason to agonize over my abnormal symptoms anymore. Even if I agonized, it didn’t seem like a better answer would come out. Now I just needed to put aside such unproductive worries, admit the fact that I’d fallen for Kwon Jukyung’s shell, and focus on job hunting.
Except for the fact that Kwon Jukyung has an unlucky way of speaking and sometimes does perverted things… No, let’s not say perverted anymore. Because I also committed a perverted act of groping a sleeping person’s body on Saturday night, so that would be spitting on my own face. Jukyung interlacing fingers with my hand was probably something he did in his sleep anyway. He probably dreamed of that girl he likes. Anyway, that pervert… Ah, no.
Anyway, it’s true that Kwon Jukyung often acts unlucky, but sometimes he does thoughtful things that confuse people. Not just letting me, who’s not even that close to him, stay and lending me money to buy clothes, but also making porridge right after I’d been starving on the first day, and the fact that he absolutely never wakes me when he goes to work.
At first, when he said I didn’t wake up even though he made noise, I just thought that was the case, but this morning in a half-asleep state, I witnessed Jukyung moving carefully without making a sound.
“……”
I shouldn’t have seen that. That way his unlucky index would have stayed higher. I squeezed my eyes shut trying to sleep, pretending I hadn’t seen, but what was already engraved in my memory didn’t disappear even after waking up.
No, this wouldn’t do. I had to remember how hopeless he acts in most daily situations, not be fooled by small kindnesses that sometimes seem like whims and get hit from behind again.
For instance, even on Sunday, how unluckily he acted over just a laptop. It’s not like the laptop is gold-plated, and it’s not like I’d use the laptop to hack his financial accounts—I just wanted to sincerely do job searching, but why did he make all sorts of strange excuses to prevent me from using the laptop?
